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[Digital Foundry] Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves: New 120Hz VRR Patch Unlocks PS5 GPU Performance

Whats a VRR capture card?

Its just a capture card, once captured you transfer the footage to a PC to do the framerate analysis.

A capture card will capture whatever you throw at it.
It doesnt actually care whether the framerate changes mid capture or whatever.
The elgato hd60 x
 
Ahhh I got you, I got you.

But whats that got to do with having a more accurate fps count?
Are we assuming DF captures are less accurate than NXGs because........because why again?
Digital foundry’s rely on the tv readings which can get jumbled by lfc whereas the vrr capture card doesnt have its counts affected by lfc. It’s also just easier ro read Nx gamers counts cause of this
 

Fnord

Member
VRR continues to be this gens golden gpos3. I flipping love it.

Well this seals it, the playstation vr is getting packed away this weekend and my ps5 will finally be enjoying its VRR goodness. Looking forward to firing up lost legacy.
I have an HDMI with a female connection on one end plugged into the TV. That allows me to switch back and forth between the PSVR and directly to the PS5. It's a bit of a PITA, but it works and I don't lose either. That said, PSVR2 can't get here fast enough.
 
Seeing as how this has a 4k/40 fidelity mode now, it makes even less sense that ND removed the 4k/40 fidelity of LoU1 Remake.

Seriously..what the hell is going on with ND lately?
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
Yeah this update has officially sucked me back in. Imagine being concerned about current gen consoles not being powerful enough...

nWjqxqN.jpg
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I am not that impressed about the performance of those games on PS5. The PS4 games were already 1080p 30fps so using the 4K 40fps mode the PS5 outputs only 5.2x more than PS4. That's really low compared to others exclusives like Death stranding (8x, from 1080p30fps to 4k 60fps). Another example: Spiderman has a similar resolution / framerate improvement in both modes but adds RT reflections!

Like with Horizon we can clearly see modest improvements compared to the PS4 / Pro games. Those games are clearly not optimized for PS5 the way Death stranding or Spiderman are which makes sense as those games are very likely PC versions ported to PS5 and released on that console first in order to milk Sony payers.
Actually DS has drops to 50 fps in some boss fights and cutscenes that feature a lot of particle effect. We see the same here. While exploring the game runs fine over 50 fps going up to 60 in some cases at native 4k but its a far more action packed game than Death Stranding and begins to drop frames when there are a lot of explosions and alpha particles. DS probably has a higher average framerate, but id say they are mostly on par here.

Where DS stands at is their out of the box thinking when it came to maximizing the performance. They had three separate 30 fps modes targeting native 4k, 1800p and the widescreen native 4k mode with black bars and a much wider FOV. ND targeting 1080p and 1440p is just dumb especially now that we've seen the game running at an average of 100 fps in 1440p. They couldve probably run it at 1800p 60 fps. They couldve used FSR 2.1. I mean Sony is using DLSS 3.0 in fucking Spiderman to sell Nvidia GPUs, they cant add FSR 2.0 to sell some PS5s??
 
Seeing as how this has a 4k/40 fidelity mode now, it makes even less sense that ND removed the 4k/40 fidelity of LoU1 Remake.

Seriously..what the hell is going on with ND lately?
I think naughty dog had a minor over sight on the fidelity unlocked capping it to 60 instead of 120 when every other fidelity mode when uncapped can go up to 120. They need to fix that and if there is a way to let a nd rep know I’d love to hear it
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Seeing as how this has a 4k/40 fidelity mode now, it makes even less sense that ND removed the 4k/40 fidelity of LoU1 Remake.

Seriously..what the hell is going on with ND lately?
ND did the same when DF criticized their PS4 Pro 4k 60 fps patch for the TLOU remaster that wasnt a locked 60 fps. Simply pulled it and replaced it with a lower resolution 60 fps mode. Of course that means the game isnt native 4k 60 fps on the PS5 because they removed that option.

Same thing is going to happen when PS5 Pro comes out and there is no uncapped framerate option at the highest resolution.

I hope they pulled it because their dynamic res scaling was broken at launch and they dont want people experiencing the game's combat at 35 fps. That said, if they dont implement DRS in the next few weeks then its time to start asking questions.
 
Actually DS has drops to 50 fps in some boss fights and cutscenes that feature a lot of particle effect. We see the same here. While exploring the game runs fine over 50 fps going up to 60 in some cases at native 4k but its a far more action packed game than Death Stranding and begins to drop frames when there are a lot of explosions and alpha particles. DS probably has a higher average framerate, but id say they are mostly on par here.

Where DS stands at is their out of the box thinking when it came to maximizing the performance. They had three separate 30 fps modes targeting native 4k, 1800p and the widescreen native 4k mode with black bars and a much wider FOV. ND targeting 1080p and 1440p is just dumb especially now that we've seen the game running at an average of 100 fps in 1440p. They couldve probably run it at 1800p 60 fps. They couldve used FSR 2.1. I mean Sony is using DLSS 3.0 in fucking Spiderman to sell Nvidia GPUs, they cant add FSR 2.0 to sell some PS5s??
I know. But both PS4 and Pro games also have framerate drops ! For instance here (27fps) and here (22fps) in the same scenes so it checks out: the 8x gap is still right.

My point is, when the game is really optimized on PS5 then 8x (from PS4) is what we should expect. And Death Stranding on PS4 and Pro was already one of the most optimized game on those consoles as it uses the Decima engine (Horizon engine).
 
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Swift_Star

Banned



A recent patch for Naughty Dog's Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection uses 120Hz displays and variable refresh rate support to offer an excellent 40fps fidelity mode and some very, very fast 1440p performance. With frame-rate caps removed, we get to see exactly what the PS5 GPU can do across a range of different performance modes. Oliver Mackenzie has the full low-down on both official and 'unofficial' system level VRR performance.


OMPgu7Z.jpg


[/URL]

40fps mode..: imma replay this
 
Actually DS has drops to 50 fps in some boss fights and cutscenes that feature a lot of particle effect. We see the same here. While exploring the game runs fine over 50 fps going up to 60 in some cases at native 4k but its a far more action packed game than Death Stranding and begins to drop frames when there are a lot of explosions and alpha particles. DS probably has a higher average framerate, but id say they are mostly on par here.

Where DS stands at is their out of the box thinking when it came to maximizing the performance. They had three separate 30 fps modes targeting native 4k, 1800p and the widescreen native 4k mode with black bars and a much wider FOV. ND targeting 1080p and 1440p is just dumb especially now that we've seen the game running at an average of 100 fps in 1440p. They couldve probably run it at 1800p 60 fps. They couldve used FSR 2.1. I mean Sony is using DLSS 3.0 in fucking Spiderman to sell Nvidia GPUs, they cant add FSR 2.0 to sell some PS5s??
Death stranding also bumped up all the settings to match the max settings on pc
 
well, if you are able to devide by 2 o r 3, yes... yes it is lol
also the game will send the same LFC signal to the capture card
Doesn’t work like that lineratily some games do up to triple buffering of frames in lfc while others only a double buffer
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Digital foundry’s rely on the tv readings which can get jumbled by lfc whereas the vrr capture card doesnt have its counts affected by lfc. It’s also just easier ro read Nx gamers counts cause of this
The HD60x and 4K602 arent exactly a million dollars.
You think the entirety of Eurogamer dont have the money to get a capture card?
Alex uses his TV cuz currently there are no commercial HDMI 2.1 capture cards, if the game renders above 1440p120 the bandwidth of the interface is what kills it.
Anything that fits within the bandwidth most of the team can capture at res.
 
The HD60x and 4K602 arent exactly a million dollars.
You think the entirety of Eurogamer dont have the money to get a capture card?
Alex uses his TV cuz currently there are no commercial HDMI 2.1 capture cards, if the game renders above 1440p120 the bandwidth of the interface is what kills it.
Anything that fits within the bandwidth most of the team can capture at res.
It’s why there is no excuse for them to not have the capture care if a solo guy like Nx gamer can come out of pocket for it.
 

01011001

Banned
Doesn’t work like that lineratily some games do up to triple buffering of frames in lfc while others only a double buffer

these will still show up on a VRR capture card tho, because it's the game doing it software side not the display.

so the VRR capture card will also display the doubled or tripled framerate
 
these will still show up on a VRR capture card tho, because it's the game doing it software side not the display.

so the VRR capture card will also display the doubled or tripled framerate
It won’t the vrr capture card only records the internal framerate being rendered before lfc kicks in you would have to do another trick to get the lfc readings to show up on the capture card
 

01011001

Banned
It won’t the vrr capture card only records the internal framerate being rendered before lfc kicks in you would have to do another trick to get the lfc readings to show up on the capture card

that's not true. the game outputs the same frames no matter what it is connected to.

Sony's games use software based LFC, meaning the game itself sends out these frames, and these frames will all be picked up by the capture card.

this is not gsync + a PC game where the monitor does the work.
and why is that? well of course because Sony TVs don't support LFC 🤣 (at least last year models and before... not sure if the newest lineup supports LFC as a display feature)
 

dotnotbot

Member
that's not true. the game outputs the same frames no matter what it is connected to.

Sony's games use software based LFC, meaning the game itself sends out these frames, and these frames will all be picked up by the capture card.

this is not gsync + a PC game where the monitor does the work.
and why is that? well of course because Sony TVs don't support LFC 🤣 (at least last year models and before... not sure if the newest lineup supports LFC as a display feature)

Rtings claims Sony TVs support minimum range of "<20 FPS" for VRR so I think they do support LFC. Last year's A80J:
 
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Actually DS has drops to 50 fps in some boss fights and cutscenes that feature a lot of particle effect. We see the same here. While exploring the game runs fine over 50 fps going up to 60 in some cases at native 4k but its a far more action packed game than Death Stranding and begins to drop frames when there are a lot of explosions and alpha particles. DS probably has a higher average framerate, but id say they are mostly on par here.

Where DS stands at is their out of the box thinking when it came to maximizing the performance. They had three separate 30 fps modes targeting native 4k, 1800p and the widescreen native 4k mode with black bars and a much wider FOV. ND targeting 1080p and 1440p is just dumb especially now that we've seen the game running at an average of 100 fps in 1440p. They couldve probably run it at 1800p 60 fps. They couldve used FSR 2.1. I mean Sony is using DLSS 3.0 in fucking Spiderman to sell Nvidia GPUs, they cant add FSR 2.0 to sell some PS5s??
Is Sony half assing (or rather not going the extra mile to implement things like FSR)the ps5 versions of their games, to get that easy performance "win" on the PC versions of said games? Seems like that would be the easy, or rather lazy, way to do it instead of truly maximizing each hardware spec separately via optimization.

I feel like they've been treating their ps5 base like crap not making native versions of God of War, death stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. I don't think catering to one platform by being ho hum towards their latest console is a good way to go about things. Other than Spiderman and Death Stranding though, all these next gen updates have fallen well below what I expected out of them graphically and performance-wise.

To me this is another one of the downsides to Sony shifting to PC as well. They're spreading themselves thin. In past generations you always knew a Sony game would strive to maximize whatever they could get out of the hardware. I can't trust Naughty Dog anymore when it comes to polish and performance. UC4 at only 1440p/60 ..same with LoU1 remake ...like come on...then there was that 4k/40 fps fidelity mode which was Renakes saving grave that gets patched out for an unstable uncapped framerate.

However- Maybe lack of FSR has something to do with consoles not being able to handle it right now because I see it getting added to Forza Horizon 5 on PC only.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I know. But both PS4 and Pro games also have framerate drops ! For instance here (27fps) and here (22fps) in the same scenes so it checks out: the 8x gap is still right.

My point is, when the game is really optimized on PS5 then 8x (from PS4) is what we should expect. And Death Stranding on PS4 and Pro was already one of the most optimized game on those consoles as it uses the Decima engine (Horizon engine).
Yeah, but so does Uncharted 4. drops to 26 fps in the same sequence DF stress tested.

8x is the best case scenario, but we know even on PC, the PS4 games dont scale 100% like that. There are CPU bottlenecks, VRAM can really mess things up at higher resolutions as we found out with the Pro which had the tflops but not the vram upgrade it needed. The PS5's 448 GBps of vram is on par with the RTX 2080 but the 2080 doesnt have to fight the CPU for a piece of that bandwidth.

I was VERY disappointed by the 1440p 60 fps and native 4k 30 fps modes, but this VRR update pushing 50 fps is good enough. When it comes to optimizing, i highly doubt devs are going back and making their engines multithreaded for older games. Even GOW devs who ported to PC didnt bother removing the CPU bottleneck because it wouldve been too much work. Maybe KojiPro which was always making this as a PC game had done more optimization for PC's multithreaded CPUs which then benefitted the PS5 port, but Im not going to expect miracles from simple ports that Sony frankly shouldnt even be charging for.

Regardless, every game let alone game engine is different, and its unfair to compare two entirely different games and how they scale up. I think averaging 50 fps at native 4k is like a 6-7x boost in pixel budget which is way better than the standard 4x we were getting before, and very close to the 8x KojiPro managed to accomplish.

Hate to come to ND's defense here because they've pissed me a lot lately, but I just dont think 6-7x vs 8x is that big of a deal considering these two engines are doing completely different things.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Is Sony half assing (or rather not going the extra mile to implement things like FSR)the ps5 versions of their games, to get that easy performance "win" on the PC versions of said games? Seems like that would be the easy, or rather lazy, way to do it instead of truly maximizing each hardware spec separately via optimization.

I feel like they've been treating their ps5 base like crap not making native versions of God of War, death stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. I don't think catering to one platform by being ho hum towards their latest console is a good way to go about things. Other than Spiderman and Death Stranding though, all these next gen updates have fallen well below what I expected out of them graphically and performance-wise.

To me this is another one of the downsides to Sony shifting to PC as well. They're spreading themselves thin. In past generations you always knew a Sony game would strive to maximize whatever they could get out of the hardware. I can't trust Naughty Dog anymore when it comes to polish and performance. UC4 at only 1440p/60 ..same with LoU1 remake ...like come on...then there was that 4k/40 fps fidelity mode which was Renakes saving grave that gets patched out for an unstable uncapped framerate.

However- Maybe lack of FSR has something to do with consoles not being able to handle it right now because I see it getting added to Forza Horizon 5 on PC only.
Yeah they are just simply coasting right now. It took GG what 4 months to fix the god awful performance mode? And that too after several downgrades to a stunning 4k version. Ive brought this up before but Sony simply didnt scale up these studios last gen and there is no way you are making 50-100 hour open world games with just 300-400 devs in anything under 5 years.

Their PC ports are mostly done by third party studios, but i know GG had to step in and waste around 6 months trying to fix it up after it launched in a poor state. I brought this up back then in several posts telling PC gamers that spending that much time on the PC port would delay the game, and it eventually did. Hopefully, this doesnt happen going forward and they have the studios focused on taking full advantage of Cernys masterpiece.

TLOU remake is just TLOU2 engine. They were never going to make that a rebuilt from a ground up PS5 engine for a game that had visual fidelity target of a PS4 game. They didnt even bother adding ray tracing to it. Their next game will likely use fancy tech like Lumens, nanite and ray tracing at which point 4k 40 fps will be a pipe dream anyway. I expect these games to top out at 1440p 30 fps. FSR 2.0 only gives around 20% better performance in Quality mode. Anything below that will likely be used for performance modes with shittier IQ anywy.
 
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that's not true. the game outputs the same frames no matter what it is connected to.

Sony's games use software based LFC, meaning the game itself sends out these frames, and these frames will all be picked up by the capture card.

this is not gsync + a PC game where the monitor does the work.
and why is that? well of course because Sony TVs don't support LFC 🤣 (at least last year models and before... not sure if the newest lineup supports LFC as a display feature)
It’s a software algorithm running the lfc solution it is bypassed by the capture card
 
Is Sony half assing (or rather not going the extra mile to implement things like FSR)the ps5 versions of their games, to get that easy performance "win" on the PC versions of said games? Seems like that would be the easy, or rather lazy, way to do it instead of truly maximizing each hardware spec separately via optimization.

I feel like they've been treating their ps5 base like crap not making native versions of God of War, death stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. I don't think catering to one platform by being ho hum towards their latest console is a good way to go about things. Other than Spiderman and Death Stranding though, all these next gen updates have fallen well below what I expected out of them graphically and performance-wise.

To me this is another one of the downsides to Sony shifting to PC as well. They're spreading themselves thin. In past generations you always knew a Sony game would strive to maximize whatever they could get out of the hardware. I can't trust Naughty Dog anymore when it comes to polish and performance. UC4 at only 1440p/60 ..same with LoU1 remake ...like come on...then there was that 4k/40 fps fidelity mode which was Renakes saving grave that gets patched out for an unstable uncapped framerate.

However- Maybe lack of FSR has something to do with consoles not being able to handle it right now because I see it getting added to Forza Horizon 5 on PC only.
I was hoping the pc releases made making native ps5 versions of all the games easy
 
Yeah, but so does Uncharted 4. drops to 26 fps in the same sequence DF stress tested.

8x is the best case scenario, but we know even on PC, the PS4 games dont scale 100% like that. There are CPU bottlenecks, VRAM can really mess things up at higher resolutions as we found out with the Pro which had the tflops but not the vram upgrade it needed. The PS5's 448 GBps of vram is on par with the RTX 2080 but the 2080 doesnt have to fight the CPU for a piece of that bandwidth.

I was VERY disappointed by the 1440p 60 fps and native 4k 30 fps modes, but this VRR update pushing 50 fps is good enough. When it comes to optimizing, i highly doubt devs are going back and making their engines multithreaded for older games. Even GOW devs who ported to PC didnt bother removing the CPU bottleneck because it wouldve been too much work. Maybe KojiPro which was always making this as a PC game had done more optimization for PC's multithreaded CPUs which then benefitted the PS5 port, but Im not going to expect miracles from simple ports that Sony frankly shouldnt even be charging for.

Regardless, every game let alone game engine is different, and its unfair to compare two entirely different games and how they scale up. I think averaging 50 fps at native 4k is like a 6-7x boost in pixel budget which is way better than the standard 4x we were getting before, and very close to the 8x KojiPro managed to accomplish.

Hate to come to ND's defense here because they've pissed me a lot lately, but I just dont think 6-7x vs 8x is that big of a deal considering these two engines are doing completely different things.
The Pro game too at 1440p. But the PS5 game at 1440p can actually drop to 59fps here. That's ~2.3x above the Pro game which is a linear improvement compared to Pro GPU and similar to most Pro games played on PS5. It proves those games are not optimized at all on PS5, simply running like any others PS4 games running on PS5 via BC with uncapped fps.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The Pro game too at 1440p. But the PS5 game at 1440p can actually drop to 59fps here. That's ~2.3x above the Pro game which is a linear improvement compared to Pro GPU and similar to most Pro games played on PS5. It proves those games are not optimized at all on PS5, simply running like any others PS4 games running on PS5 via BC with uncapped fps.
I mean the game averages 100 fps according to DF in 1440p so that would make it a 3.3x improvement over the 30 fps Pro version. On par with the 3x increase in GPU performance. If you want to go by 1% minimum thats fine but no one does that in the PC game when running benchmarks. We always look at average.

The game is simply being ported to the PS5 SDK to ensure it gets the SSD and IO improvements. I highly doubt they went in there and added PS5 specific optimizations you're asking for. No one does that for ports. Especially of games released 6 years ago.
 

Vick

Gold Member
Yeah they are just simply coasting right now. It took GG what 4 months to fix the god awful performance mode? And that too after several downgrades to a stunning 4k version. Ive brought this up before but Sony simply didnt scale up these studios last gen and there is no way you are making 50-100 hour open world games with just 300-400 devs in anything under 5 years.

Their PC ports are mostly done by third party studios, but i know GG had to step in and waste around 6 months trying to fix it up after it launched in a poor state. I brought this up back then in several posts telling PC gamers that spending that much time on the PC port would delay the game, and it eventually did. Hopefully, this doesnt happen going forward and they have the studios focused on taking full advantage of Cernys masterpiece.

TLOU remake is just TLOU2 engine. They were never going to make that a rebuilt from a ground up PS5 engine for a game that had visual fidelity target of a PS4 game. They didnt even bother adding ray tracing to it. Their next game will likely use fancy tech like Lumens, nanite and ray tracing at which point 4k 40 fps will be a pipe dream anyway. I expect these games to top out at 1440p 30 fps. FSR 2.0 only gives around 20% better performance in Quality mode. Anything below that will likely be used for performance modes with shittier IQ anywy.
I liked this post but only based on hopes and dreams.

I wish I could share your optimism about the bolded, and when you wish you had SlimySnake SlimySnake optimism you know something's fucking wrong.

In Part I they finally added PCSS-like shadows, and better shadows were the only noticeable visual element in need for a serious upgrade.
They also used a really, really good DoF in Part I.. I think they simply took advantage of PS5 extra power to fix their weaknesses and are now satisfied about how their games can look and run, also at 60fps.
I mean Druckmann literally just said about Part I "At times I'm thinking -I can't believe what I'm playing-".. just shut the fuck up Neil, have you missed UE5 on PS5?

And then there's the major thing: Naughty Dog engine has been just ported to PC after more than a decade. And we know it must have been a nightmare (partially confirmed by the consistent delay of the Legacy of Thieves collection), I can easily see them keep using it for the rest of the Gen. Especially considering the need for PC ports this time which is something they'll 100% keep in mind when designing new games.

A new Engine made specifically for the PS5 using "fancy tech like Lumens, nanite and ray tracing", later to be ported all over again on PC? I just don't see it at all.
And that's the same for every single Sony First Party with engines just landed on PC.
That's the main reason I haven't been over the moon about all this PC support, not because of the retarded "You just don't want others to enjoy the toys you enjoy" which if anything has been a blessing to read less salty trolling and constant downplaying of masterpieces by sad individuals, but because Sony focus on PC instead of a single, custom machine with single specs would have obviously led to this scenario.

I don't know, I hope I'm wrong of course. But not a single PS5 "exclusive" managed to impress me as much as launch or close to launch PS4 exclusives. Those were the best available at the time and then some, and that's not the case this time because we know more can be achieved on Cerny's machine.

I hope we get another Uncharted game soon.
With Nathan Drake please.
Yep, that's the thing. I'd kill for another Uncharted, but it's really Drake or bust for me.
Or at the very least young Sully.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I liked this post but only based on hopes and dreams.

I wish I could share your optimism about the bolded, and when you wish you had SlimySnake SlimySnake optimism you know something's fucking wrong.

In Part I they finally added PCSS-like shadows, and better shadows were the only noticeable visual element in need for a serious upgrade.
They also used a really, really good DoF in Part I.. I think they simply took advantage of PS5 extra power to fix their weaknesses and are now satisfied about how their games can look and run, also at 60fps.
I mean Druckmann literally just said about Part I "At times I'm thinking -I can't believe what I'm playing-".. just shut the fuck up Neil, have you missed UE5 on PS5?

And then there's the major thing: Naughty Dog engine has been just ported to PC after more than a decade. And we know it must have been a nightmare (partially confirmed by the consistent delay of the Legacy of Thieves collection), I can easily see them keep using it for the rest of the Gen. Especially considering the need for PC ports this time which is something they'll 100% keep in mind when designing new games.

A new Engine made specifically for the PS5 using "fancy tech like Lumens, nanite and ray tracing", later to be ported all over again on PC? I just don't see it at all.
And that's the same for every single Sony First Party with engines just landed on PC.
That's the main reason I haven't been over the moon about all this PC support, not because of the retarded "You just don't want others to enjoy the toys you enjoy" which if anything has been a blessing to read less salty trolling and constant downplaying of masterpieces by sad individuals, but because Sony focus on PC instead of a single, custom machine with single specs would have obviously led to this scenario.

I don't know, I hope I'm wrong of course. But not a single PS5 "exclusive" managed to impress me as much as launch or close to launch PS4 exclusives. Those were the best available at the time and then some, and that's not the case this time because we know more can be achieved on Cerny's machine.


Yep, that's the thing. I'd kill for another Uncharted, but it's really Drake or bust for me.
Or at the very least young Sully.
YOUNG/YOUNGER SULLY
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I liked this post but only based on hopes and dreams.

I wish I could share your optimism about the bolded, and when you wish you had SlimySnake SlimySnake optimism you know something's fucking wrong.

In Part I they finally added PCSS-like shadows, and better shadows were the only noticeable visual element in need for a serious upgrade.
They also used a really, really good DoF in Part I.. I think they simply took advantage of PS5 extra power to fix their weaknesses and are now satisfied about how their games can look and run, also at 60fps.
I mean Druckmann literally just said about Part I "At times I'm thinking -I can't believe what I'm playing-".. just shut the fuck up Neil, have you missed UE5 on PS5?

And then there's the major thing: Naughty Dog engine has been just ported to PC after more than a decade. And we know it must have been a nightmare (partially confirmed by the consistent delay of the Legacy of Thieves collection), I can easily see them keep using it for the rest of the Gen. Especially considering the need for PC ports this time which is something they'll 100% keep in mind when designing new games.

A new Engine made specifically for the PS5 using "fancy tech like Lumens, nanite and ray tracing", later to be ported all over again on PC? I just don't see it at all.
And that's the same for every single Sony First Party with engines just landed on PC.
That's the main reason I haven't been over the moon about all this PC support, not because of the retarded "You just don't want others to enjoy the toys you enjoy" which if anything has been a blessing to read less salty trolling and constant downplaying of masterpieces by sad individuals, but because Sony focus on PC instead of a single, custom machine with single specs would have obviously led to this scenario.

I don't know, I hope I'm wrong of course. But not a single PS5 "exclusive" managed to impress me as much as launch or close to launch PS4 exclusives. Those were the best available at the time and then some, and that's not the case this time because we know more can be achieved on Cerny's machine.
There is definitely lots to be concerned about with ND. the fact that they spent 2 years on a last gen remake is bad enough but the fact that they are pretending it looks next gen is very concerning. Have their standards fallen off? Are they content with PS4 quality visuals for the PS5?

I think they are just lying to save face. They know deep down the game doesnt look next gen and are overcompensating on twitter. I know they lost 14 lead designers during TLOU2 dev but it turned out really well anyway. There is a chance that the main talent has left and all the newbies just dont have what it takes, but i highly doubt the team that made TLOU2 all of a sudden turned into a completely different studio.

I think they just took over the TLOU remake project because they had nothing to do after TLOU2. Neil was busy with the show and Evan Wells didnt plan ahead. It was always a PS4 game so they couldnt do much with it. I think the ICE Team is probably working on an engine upgrade in the background and adding those features to this last gen remake VSG was working on was probably going to be too much work. Whether or not they do raytracing or use nanite is irrelevant as long as their game looks next gen or on par with the CG ad they made for TLOU2. They have been upgrading the same Uncharted engine since they had such a horrendous time starting from scratch on Uncharted 1. Doesnt mean they wont be able to push visuals if they simply upgrade the engine instead of starting fresh.

P.S yes, the whole reason why Sony studios were so successful the last couple of gens because of that one sku approach. But hopefully they just have external studios working on these PC ports. I dont think ND is porting Uncharted to PC.
 

Vick

Gold Member
I think they are just lying to save face. They know deep down the game doesnt look next gen and are overcompensating on twitter. I know they lost 14 lead designers during TLOU2 dev but it turned out really well anyway. There is a chance that the main talent has left and all the newbies just dont have what it takes, but i highly doubt the team that made TLOU2 all of a sudden turned into a completely different studio.
As far as I know they lost 70% of Naughty Dog during TLOU2 (hope it was worth it Neil :messenger_ok:). Including Straley which was not only a major part of the company but also someone who played an important role on visuals (Drake's Fortune insane water was achieved also because of him for instance, or at least that's what the Making Of led to believe).

I think the ICE Team is probably working on an engine upgrade in the background and adding those features to this last gen remake VSG was working on was probably going to be too much work. Whether or not they do raytracing or use nanite is irrelevant as long as their game looks next gen or on par with the CG ad they made for TLOU2. They have been upgrading the same Uncharted engine since they had such a horrendous time starting from scratch on Uncharted 1. Doesnt mean they wont be able to push visuals if they simply upgrade the engine instead of starting fresh.
Yes, but that same engine is just too fucking heavy now. It's not suitable for Next-Gen, there's only so much can do with it and I think they already did what they could with Part I (and those performances are clear about how much headroom it has). Doesn't even support any kind of reconstruction techniques ffs..

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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
As far as I know they lost 70% of Naughty Dog during TLOU2 (hope it was worth it Neil :messenger_ok:). Including Straley which was not only a major part of the company but also someone who played an important role on visuals (Drake's Fortune insane water was achieved also because of him for instance, or at least that's what the Making Of led to believe).


Yes, but that same engine is just too fucking heavy now. It's not suitable for Next-Gen, there's only so much can do with it and I think they already did what they could with Part I (and those performances are clear about how much headroom it has). Doesn't even support any kind of reconstruction techniques ffs..
They didnt lose 70% of devs, they lost 70% of lead designers (out of a total 20 IIRC) but were clearly able to replace them and still release a GOTY.

Interesting point about the engine being too heavy. Thats immediately what I thought of when the remake struggled to run at native 4k 40 fps. Its basically brute forcing the PS5 GPU and struggling even in linear corridors to maintain 35 fps. Very odd considering we have open world games with ray tracing that run at a much higher framerate. They definitely need to come up with new ways to render their game but i dont know if going with realtime GI techniques like Lumens and relying on primitive/mesh shaders are going to make these games run at native 4k 40 fps. they will look better, but the performance will be much worse.

Not adding reconstruction or DRS is just odd especially after they announced the performance mode was going to have DRS. They had 4kcb implemented at the Pro reveal but switched to a native 1440p because they didnt like the results so its not like the engine cant do it. It's just that they arent putting in enough effort into these ports. Maybe the DRS thing was a bug and they will add it back in soon.
 
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